Discovery's list of achievements include delivering the Hubble Space Telescope to orbit, carrying the first Russian cosmonaut to launch on a U.S. spaceship, performing the first rendezvous with the Russian space station Mir with the first female shuttle pilot in the cockpit, returning Mercury astronaut John Glenn to orbit, and bringing shuttle flights back to life after the Challenger and Columbia accidents.

President Bill Clinton was on hand for the 1998 launch of space shuttle Discovery, which carried pioneering astronaut John Glenn back into space 36 years after he became the first American to orbit the Earth.